The best way to install and setup a windows 10 vm as a daily driver or a Gaming VM

hi guys and welcome to this week's video so you want to install the Windows 10 p.m. well maybe you just want to run some everyday tasks like some browsing and some office work so a simple TM of the remote graphics will be fine but maybe you want to set up a gaming VM because you're itching to play the latest and greatest PC games so you're going to need to pass through a gaming graphics card some sound and throw in a keyboard and mouse so whatever you use cases you're going to want to do it right and gain the best performance you can so let's jump in and set up a few windows can be ends [Music] [Music] right so in the first part of the video we're going to install a standard Windows 10 via no pass-through hardware or anything what we're going to do is going to download the Windows 10 ISO and I'm going to show you our port and legitimate copy of Windows 10 Pro for only $20 and then we're going to look at what resources were going to assign to the VM and then we're going to install the OS along with the vert I'll drive errs once installed we're going to look at different ways of connecting to the VM after which we'll do some post install tubes and tweaks and set up some symlinks to make efficient use out of by disc space and we'll also install a virtual soundcard so we can get sound out of the VM without having a physical sound card present in the second part of the video when we have a good stable VM then we're going to pass through some hardware and turn it into a gaming VM we'll get the hardware working and then tackle some common problems like something nicknamed demonic sound by labeling something called the MSI interrupts then we'll run a benchmark and we should have a good gaming VM which is very near bare metal performance okay then let's get started so obviously to install Windows 10 we need to Windows 10 ISO and obviously the best place to download this from is Microsoft for the most up-to-date version now place the link in the description taking you exactly to the correct place our friend of mine showed me where we can fly a legitimate copy of Windows 10 Pro for only $20 I've also placed a link directly to that as well for those of you who don't already have a license ok so once we've downloaded the ISO image we're going to want to move it across onto our server but before we do that we just need to check where our share is and for most of us we're going to put our images is in the share court is OS here so just before you do this open it up and just check here under SMP security settings the export is set to yes class this isn't a case then you're not going to see it so you're not going to spare to transfer the ISO image on there so once that's done just click onto done and now we can just copy this file and there's my share there is oh and I'm just going to paste it into the share okay so when it's copied across there's one another file that we're going to need to have here and that's the first IO drivers so let's just minimize this and now have to go across to the Settings tab and click on the diem manager here and we can download the ver tired either straight from the web UI so it's click click onto the drop down menu and make sure you choose the newest one and then click on to download and now you can see that files downloading okay now that's downloaded if we go back to the share we can see here the vertebra vers are downloaded into our ISO share okay so now let's go to the VMS tab and scroll down and then choose the Windows 10 template okay so now here we have to decide how we're going to allocate our available resources to the VM now this will depend on what we're going to use the VM for obviously a windows VM that all it will do is web browsing and emails is I'm going to need as much horsepower as a Windows VM that you want to game on or do video editing on now it's important not to under provision with VM but it's also very important not to over provision the VM as well so we need to plan what the PM will be useful whilst keeping in mind the other tasks the server will be run whilst the VM is active but before we start let's just give the VM a name and I'm going to call mine zero zero one Windows 10 now if we go down to the part in the template where it says logical CPUs now when we first get our server both of us come here and think hey the more the merrier and just click all of the CPUs well this isn't the best idea and I'll go into far far more detail about this in next week's video about performance tweaking but today I'm just going to point out two important things now firstly the unread server likes to use the fast core itself so it's always better to leave this free and here when we can see the date' logical CPUs numbered from 0 up to 7 this doesn't mean that I've got 8 cores it means that I've got 8 threads now most CPUs if they have hyper threading will have 2 threads per core so we need to use these threads in pairs so a 4 core CPU will have 8 threads as you can see here now automatically you might think if we uncheck the low numbered CPUs here the 0 and the 1 while we're only using 6 threads out of the total of 8 so we're going to be using 3 calls for the VM right well no actually we're not let's just click on tools I'll open that in a new tab okay so now let's click on to system devices and if I scroll down here you can see where it says CPU thread pairings now on each line here that is each core so the first line here is core 1 2 3 & 4 so if you see call 1 he actually uses CPU number 0 and CPU number 4 so when we uncheck CPU 0 and CPU 1 we weren't actually giving the VM 3 of its own cause we're only giving it two of its own cause and giving it to other threads to share with everything else and what we should have done if we wanted to give to the VM three cores of its own is we should have given it these three here so we would have given it 1 and 5 2 & 6 & 3 & 7 so it's really important to always end your CPUs in hyper-threaded paths so now this way we're giving the VM 3 of its own course and the VM isn't sharing the split core with another process so with 4 cores the CPU pairing is as we've seen but is there any difference if we had more calls well the answer is yes now I have a high cause II on in the server which at present I have labeled some cause to simulate a quad-core CPU so now let's simulate an eight core CPU and see the difference and now you can see with eight cores things look very different if you remember before the zero in the form of the first core so let's see if that's the same now no the first core now is actually zero and eight this is because we've got more calls so you're always going to have to check your CPU thread pairings don't just try and guess from here okay so now I've enabled the rest of the cores on the CPU and if we look at these CPU pairings we can see that it's different again the first CPU this time is 0 and 14 now this is a feature that I'd really like to see in the unread VM manager that's the ability to see the CPU pairings whilst assigning the logical CPUs I've posted a link in the description to a feature request I opened a while ago on the unread forums so if any of you think this would be useful then please go there and second my request right so I'm going to use 4 cores with this VM so that means 8 threads so I've just got to avoid using CPU 0 and 14 so I'm going to use 1 15 to 16 317 and 418 as these are paired pipe thread cores and ran the same again allocate as much as you need now I always recommend leaving at least two gigs of RAM available for unread more if possible I don't go over provisioning Ram there's no point giving a Windows gaming VM something like 32 gigs of ram you're never going to need it and for BIOS leave it as Oh VMs only change it to see BIOS if for some reason you can't install the windows VM using au VMs and then for install ISO obviously we use our Windows 10 image we downloaded earlier and the per tire drivers ISO that's already prefilled in the next thing here the primary V disk location we can leave that to automatic we just set the Vedas sighs we don't need very much really because we can use symlinks to link to our array so I'm just going to use 70 gigs for mine here leave the graphics on BNC and the video driver as qxl and then let's go down to the bottom and click on create now as the VM starts make sure you don't forget to press any key to boot from the CD or DVD and there's a problem that you may or may not run into if you find here that the windows spinny thing doesn't start turning around and it doesn't start booting then you're going to have to force stop the VM so just close VNC and then shutdown the VM and then we want to click on here and then and then we want to edit the template and what we're going to have to do is we're going to have to just allocate one virtual CPU in order to do the install now I've only ever had to do this tix before when installing the update to an existing Windows 10 p.m. but then I've never installed the creators edition of Windows 10 before either now don't worry you're not going to have to leave the VM on only one core we only have to do this just to install the operating system once everything is installed we can put all the cores back on and everything will be absolutely fine and like I say not everyone has to do this fix it just seems that some of us have this problem and putting it onto one core just sorts it out and another problem that you might have it's very bad web for UNC performance you can see that the mouse is a little bit lagging here and it can actually get worse the longer you're logged in and this is going to be fixed in an upcoming undrained release but until then let's do a little work around you can see here it says the VNC pause and it's 5-0 zero so what we have to do is just basically connect with another VNC client and on the Mac I'm actually using chicken of the VNC here so any VNC client will be fine so what you have to do is just put in the host which is your unread server IP and for me it's 10 10.20 $1.99 so you put your IP address in and then you put in the port which is five nine zero zero or if display then just put a zero and then click on connect and now we'll have much better control over the VNC and they can install windows in the normal way so let's click on to install and then you can put in your product key if you want to or if you want to do that maintenance click I don't have a product key and then choose the Windows 10 Pro and then click on to next and then you're going to have to agree to the license terms and then click custom install you'll see here that there's no hard drives action in this vid and it says we couldn't find any drivers to get a storage driver click load driver so now we have to load the vert I ou driver so it's click on here and go to your II drive and then expand that scroll down to the bottom of the list and then you'll see vio sto R and then click on windows 10 and then AMD 64 and then click OK and then click Next and now with the storage driver installed we can see here our virtual hard disk so just click on to next and our windows will install without you having to do anything else really so just sit back and get a coffee and wait for it to install then we just have to click on to our region and click yes and then also confirm the keyboard layout and now it asks you to connect to a network we don't have a network driver at the moment so it's click skip and then the VM is going to reboot and Windows 10 is installed so we just need to put our user name in here and you can give it a password if you want to or if you don't just click Next and then I don't enable Cortana myself but it's up to you if you want to basically I don't enable any of the features from Microsoft I always like to go through all of these here and turn absolutely everything off how I figure it is if I feel I'm missing out on something later on I can always turn it back on but Windows 10 does an awful lot of data mining that some Microsoft make a lot of money selling the data and I'd rather not have my BM constantly connecting to the internet sending off my personal data so choose what you're there then click accept and now we're on to the desktop and you can see straight away it says it's searching for your display driver there's a few more that io drivers that we're going to have to install so just navigate to the device manager and here you'll see three devices that don't have a driver but there's another device that most people I think forget which is actually the display adapter and it automatically puts in the basic Microsoft display adapter that there is actually a qxl driver on the dart io disk so we want to browse to our II drive highlight it then click OK and then click Next and it will install the driver ok and next to do exactly the same for the ethernet driver and the other two drivers we just browse to ie Drive highlight it and then click Next and install the driver okay we've got one last driver to install well we have to install with qmu guest agent so just click on to my computer and go to the e drive and then click on the guest agent folder and run the qnu GA x64 file and then click yes ok so now that's everything installed so you can close this window and now that we've changed our display adapter let's change the resolution and then we're going to go to a website called WWN icon which allows us to install multiple applications that are useful for our windows machine so here we just put a check against every application we wants and then we just download a file which then installs all of these onto our computer [Music] and as you can see I chose to install the classic skin for Windows I don't really like the Metro interface I find this much more pleasant and now I'm going to download a program called anti bacon which removes all of the Microsoft data mining software and blocks it calling home all of these things you can't easily disable in the regular Windows settings so this program is a free program does a great job it's up to you if you want to install it this is just something I do so just download the file and put it onto your computer and run it once it's finished click on immunize and then on the optional tab you can click and apply any additional protection that you want and then click close okay so I don't really like the NC it doesn't work very well for me so I'm going to install something called Splashtop desktop now a lot of you might want to use IVP and that's fine them it's a great product and it works very well but I've the first flash desktop the personal version of Splashtop desktop is free and what I really like about it is that has GPU acceleration for graphics so if you're going to use a GPU in your VM and you also want to be able to connect remotely then Splashtop desktops the way forward anyway after you've installed it you're going to have to log into an account if you don't have one you need to create one and also you need to download it and log into the same account on the computer that you're going to be using to access the VM ok so now we need to make some changes in the windows settings to make it work better as a VM so let's go to the control panel and go to our power options and then we want to click on choose what the power button does and here we want to disable fast startup ok and now we want to click on show additional plans and we want to change the profile to high-performance and let's click on change plan settings and then change advanced power settings and we're going to disable the USB suspend and we're also going to set it so the hard drives never turn off and click apply and ok and also I personally like to have it so my display never turns off and then you can close this window now the next thing I'm going to do is we're going to disable the indexing feature on windows because we're going to be storing most of our data on the array it's not really necessary to have the indexing on so what we want to do is click on to the start and then type services dot MSC and press Enter now if we scroll down here you can see windows search so let's stop the service and then right click it go to properties and we're going to put it onto disable and click apply and ok now let's click on to the start again and type in CMD and then right click CMD and run as administrator ok and now type the following command power CFG space hyphen H space off ok and now again to reduce the disk i/o we're going to we're going to disable disk defragmentation so we want to right click go to properties tools then we're going to click on to optimize and then we're going to click on to change settings and we're going to untick run on the schedule and then click close now if you want to do exists defragmentation we can run that ourselves and ever we want to ok so now what we're going to do is we're going to create some siblings and we're going to create some map drives in order to get the best out of our array so what we're going to do is we're going to minimize this and go back to our web UI for unread and let's click on to shares and we're going to make a new share doesn't matter what we call it I'm just going to call it Windows disk and you can choose here whether you want it to use the cache drive or not I'm not going to bother I'm just click Add share and under SMB security settings we just want to make sure it's on export yes and you can set security if you want to but if you do set security now make sure you setup the same username and password on the unread server as you did on your Windows VM otherwise it's not going to be able to access this properly so click on to done I'm going to leave mine as just public ok so the first thing we're going to do is we're going to map a network drive so go to this PC and then go to computer click on map network drive then hit the Browse button and find your server and then scroll down until you find the share we just created and click OK and click finish and now inside the map network drive let's create a folder called documents ok and now we're going to browse to our C Drive and go to users and then find your username and now if we scroll down to access documents is right click the documents folder and click onto properties and then vs. location then we want to click on to move and then we want to click on network locations and then documents and click select folder and click apply and click yes to move all the contents and ok ok and so now our documents folder this maps across onto the array so all of our important documents they won't be inside the V disk that will be on the array so they'll be protected by the arrays parity which is always a good thing and for those of us whose most important files are game files we can do a similar thing with steam so for just install steam okay so once steam is installed click on the button saying steam and then go to settings and then click on downloads and then click on steam library folders and click on add library folder click on the drop-down box here and then click the map network drive letter which can be is busy and click on new folder and click OK click select then click on the directory right click it and click make defaults and so now all of your Steam games all install into here and click on close ok and now we're going to download a piece of software and the link to here is in the description it's a piece of software called directory linker let's click on to download and download that onto your desktop then run the file and going to download net framework okay so now dotnet frameworks installed let's rerun the file and what this program allows us to do is to easily create some links so you can click onto the folder here and browse so say go to the C Drive and I'm going to make a new folder and I'm just going to call it array ok and I'm going to link that to we're going to look at that cross over onto the array so you click on to network and then click on to the server and then find the share and then click OK and go and now if we go into our C Drive we'll see this folder here called array and that links through to the map Drive it's exactly the same as the said Drive here and the useful thing about using symlinks is if you want to install a program on the network drive and it checks to see what type of drive it is you can try using a symlink and seeing if it will install that way it doesn't always work but sometimes it does ok and another good use for symlinks is if you imagine we go to our programs folder and inside there we've got some awesome program and inside the folder here you've got a folder that keeps all of our settings and we'd like to actually have that not on the feed yes but on the array so if anything ever goes wrong with our B disk at least we've got all of the settings off the array kind of a bit similar to with the docker container having an app data file elsewhere so all we going to have to do is make a folder for it in the map network drive and call all the settings and start our dir linker again so we just want to browse to the folder that all the settings and click OK and we want to link it to the same one in the share and again we're going to leave it on copy contents the target then delete it so that will move everything across from here into here then it will delete the original replacing it with a CID link so let's click on to go and I will click finish so let's just have a look at that so now you can see all the settings now is over cross on the array so that's some some ideas there how you can do certain little tips and tricks to be able to save space on the B disk and protect some of your data keeping it parity protected on the array ok cool so now we've nearly finished let's restart the VM and install the rest of our course and also notice here that we don't actually have any working sound now obviously we don't have a sound card pass-through but we can actually install a virtual soundcard and get sound working within Splashtop desktop so whilst we enable the cause we'll put in a virtual soundcard as well so let's shut down the VM and put these bits in so that so from the template for the windows 10 VM and you'll see here there's only one thread or one logical CPU enabled I'm actually quite surprised at how well the VM did work with just one thread so that's really all the four cores that we originally wanted to pass through to this VM that's a total of 8 threads then scroll down and click on update now to add the virtual soundcard we can't do it through the template so we actually have to edit the XML so it's really easy so to scroll down to the bottom and you'll see where the graphics video driver here is installed so just underneath that just paste the following and we're using the sound model as IC h9 that's the best one to use for compatibility I think for Windows 10 you don't have to actually install any drivers so once you pasted that in just click on to update and then start up the VM again and you can see now here that we've got our sound being recognized but let's just buy try playing a youtube video quickly so you can see what it's like [Music] you so I think the PM is working really well the video has been a bit longer than I'd planned sorry it was so long but I really wanted to cover as much as I could for setting up a Windows VM without using pass-through now hopefully I haven't forgotten anything if I have then please share and put your own tips in the comments below in the next part of the video we'll be passing through all the hardware to convert this into a proper gaming VM with a GTX 1080 and hopefully in the process showing you the common problems and how to solve them so until then I'm going to sign off well I hope you found this video useful if you did then please hit the like button and subscribe to the channel any donations are always welcome which you can do from the links at the top of the page anyway guys whatever you're up to for the rest of the day I hope it's good and I'll catch you in that next video

Channel: Spaceinvader One

Views: 246,860

Rating: 4.9397187 out of 5

Keywords: unraid, unraid gaming, gaming vm, windows 10 gaming vm, virtual gaming, linux, tutorial, guide, how to, cpu pinning, windows symlinks, kvm gaming, gpu pass through, kvm, qemu, unRAID tutorial, The best way to install and setup a windows 10 vm as a daily driver or a Gaming VM

Id: miYUGWq6l24

Length: 28min 33sec (1713 seconds)

Published: Mon May 29 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/plusoneinternet]

Your videos are awesome, thank you for all the work you put in for the community!

[u/draggonguy]

Exactly what I was looking for. Thanks!

[u/jhereg10]

Excellent as always. I owe you (at least your videos!) for getting my Windows VM up and running with GPU passthrough so my son can do windows gaming.

[u/xbillybobx]

Is gaming in a vm legit now? Is there still a big frame rate loss?

[u/flowerbunkus]

Any news on ryzen unraid build?

[u/Kysersoze79]

I used these two guides to tweak and get my win10 VM up and running (with a 1050 for $95). I used your other moonlight video and set that up on a retropie setup, and also am now using a $15 steam link (its on sale right now) to game from the other room.

I'll also add that it WAS working great, then my VM started turning off randomly, and after some troubleshooting, my 30GB partition wasn't cutting it (less than 2gb free, even with all the steam stuff on the array), so I used yet another one of your videos to resize my vdisk to 50gb, and everything is golden again. So keep them going!

[u/sesstreets]

Does there exist a guide to do this without unraid? I'd rather stay in xenOS or roll my own with CentOS

[u/spaceinvaderone]

Hi, Guys. This is the first part of a two-part video about setting up a Windows 10 KVM VM in unRAID. (second part in a day or 2 if work lets me !) The first part deals with setting up the VM correctly to be able to use as a 'daily driver'. Then the second part passing through hardware to turn it into a gaming VM. The first part consists of

1. Download a windows 10 iso.
2. Where to Buy a license for windows 10 pro for $20
3. How to assign resources and correctly pin you cpus.
4. How to install the virt io drivers including the qxl graphics driver.
5. How to remove or block the windows 10 data mining - phone home - etc with anti beacon.
6. How to install multiple useful programmes with ninite
7. Using Splashtop desktop for good quality remote viewing
8. How to install a virtual sound card to have sound in Splashtop/RDP etc.
9. Using mapped drives and symlinks to get the most out of the array.
10. Windows tweaks for VM compatibility.
11. general tips

Hope you find it useful :)

[u/w76]

A little late to comment, but I followed this and it all works but sound. I added the XML, restarted the VM, and it shows as having sound and the sound mixer looks like its making noise when a sound plays but I'm not hearing anything. Was using TightVNC but also tried through unraids web VNC viewer too.

Not sure what's up.